Everyday Strategies and Tactics: A Study on the Senses of Social Practices and their Influences in the Making of a Free Trade Show
Name: DANIEL LANNA PEIXOTO
Publication date: 28/06/2011
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| HÉLIO ZANQUETTO FILHO | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ALFREDO RODRIGUES LEITE DA SILVA | Co advisor * |
| HÉLIO ZANQUETTO FILHO | Advisor * |
Summary: The word strategy has gained ground in academic writings, speeches and consulting. Despite the increased use of the word there is still a gap between talking about strategy and what people really acomplish in practice relating to directions taken by the organizations. This rises questions about what strategy is and how it arises in organizations. Meanwhile, there is also the possibility of the organizational strategy research take different espitemological directions from the ones announced by modernism (WHITTINGTON, 2004). This research directions include the perspective of strategy as social practice in a way that it is not something which belongs to the organization but something people do at performing their activities. This includes not only members of the organizational summit but also those who are related to the organization in a direct or indirect way. The strategy, being considered as a social practice, is not reconized only by something formal, rational or hierarchical. In line with this, it opens the possibility os investigating the phenomenon of strategy in organizations in other contexts, which includes environments WHERE informality dictatesthe development of organizational activities. In this sense, aiming to reveal how people participate in the construction of organizational strategies in an informal setting, using the concepts of strategy and everyday tactics discussed by Certeau (2007), a case study of a stall which participate in three street fairs took place in Vitória ES. In implementing the research, participant observation and informal interviews were performed, focusing on ways in which social actors act and interact with it and shape the "make trade fair". The analysis of field notes, derived from observations and interviews revealed 15 themes with which the actions developed by the research subjects are related. After observing these issues and the correlation between them, some considerations could be made, and one is versed on the many ways that a practice may have, and can be focused on strategy or tactics everyday. Moreover, it showed as the sense of a practice changes as the actors and circumstances also change. Finally, it was veryfied the positioning of the stall owner as someone who not only wants to be alone in thinking the strategy of the stall, but also the one who executes, sharing the work that designs the strategy. To other workers in the stall he attributes only realizing their work trying to effect the separation between those who think on that strategy and who execute it. However, empirical evidence showed that body and mind are interconnected, even when facing a force trying to move them to the contrary. This force, exercised by one of the stallholders who thinks and performs, want to make the others different merchants and private them to work with their mind.
